This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/22
March 23, 2004
MIM: The Islamic Association of Palestine is the American branch of Hamas .It's main headquarters is the Bridgeview Mosque in Illinois .
Rafiq Jaber,is the both the spokesman for the Bridgeview Mosque Foundation and the leader of the IAP.
CAIR -The Council of American Islamic Relations is an off shoot of the IAP/Hamas and operates under the guise of a Muslim civil rights group.(see articles below )
MIM: This is an article from 1996 some of the individuals and groups cited in the article have been investigated and arrested on terror funding charges. The organisations include SAAR and the IIIT . In 2003 Sami Al Arian and Abdulrahman Alamoudi were arrested on terrorism related charges. Both are in jail awaiting trial.
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/sep96/emerson.htm
Stop Aid and Comfort for Patrons of Terror
by Steven Emerson (1996)
Like clockwork, the destruction of TWA Flight 800 and the explosion at the Olympics have led members of Congress and the Clinton administration to call for a host of new antiterrorist measures. The administration meanwhile touts the "successes" it has already achieved in the battle against terrorism. But the administration's deeds do not match its words. True, President Clinton has supported tough antiterrorism legislation. But his administration has failed to crack down on terrorist front groups in the U.S., turned a blind eye to Syrian terrorism and befriended domestic Islamic organizations that champion and finance the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
From Professor to Terrorist
A political correctness enforced by American Muslim groups has limited the public's knowledge about the spread of radical Islam in the U.S. But as the World Trade Center bombing proved, the danger is clear. "Several [terrorist] groups have established footholds within ethnic or resident alien communities here in the U.S.," Adm. William O. Studeman, then acting CIA director, told Congress last year. "These communities offer terrorists financial support and a source for new recruits." Hamas, for example, operates an extensive network of front groups, from San Diego to Houston to New York City, operating under religious, charitable and human-rights monikers.
Radical Muslim groups dismiss such allegations as Zionist propaganda. A case study in Tampa, Fla., proves otherwise. In October 1995 Ramadan Abdullah Shallah took over as head of the Islamic Jihad, based in Damascus, Syria. From 1991 through early 1995, Mr. Shallah was a professor at Tampa's University of South Florida and director of the World Islamic Studies Enterprise, ostensibly an academic research center.
After the ex-professor assumed his Islamic Jihad post, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service raided his former campus office, as well as the offices and home of his USF colleague Sami Al-Arian, the founder of WISE and an affiliated "religious charity" called the Islamic Committee for Palestine. Federal investigators uncovered overwhelming evidence that both organizations were arms of Islamic Jihad. Under the cover of legitimacy its university affiliation provided, WISE actually brought terrorists into the U.S. and raised funds for Islamic Jihad. Mr. Al-Arian, now under federal investigation, organized a series of conferences for "Islamic leaders and thinkers" in Chicago and St. Louis between 1988 and 1992, which featured a number of the world's top, terrorist leaders. The evidence found in his home and office constitute one of the largest collections of raw terrorist material ever seized in the U.S.
According to federal sources, documents and testimony connected with the Florida investigation, the Islamic Jihad front groups in Tampa had extensive financial and political ties with many Islamic extremist groups world-wide.They collaborated with Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman and others involved in the World Trade Center bombing. They also laundered millions of dollars, worked with Hamas leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere, and helped oversee terrorist cells in the Middle East. The spiritual head of Islamic Jihad, Abdul Aziz Odeh, who visited Tampa and stayed with Mr. Al-Arian several times, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing.
And what has the Clinton administration done to combat radical Islamic groups operating in the U.S.? Very little. In January 1995 Mr. Clinton issued an executive order to freeze the assets of 12 terrorist groups. Investigators found terrorist front groups operating in more than a dozen states, with assets worth tens of millions of dollars. But the Treasury Department has seized only $800,000, from those with the most blatant links to terrorist activity: WISE; Musa Marzuk, the Hamas leader arrested last year by alert field agents at New York's JFK Airport; and Mohammad Salah, a Palestinian-American convicted by an Israeli court of receiving U.S. funds to attack Israelis.These funds were seized, according to one official, because "their existence had notoriously come to the government's attention and thus it was forced to seize the money. We didn't go out and look for it, that's for sure.It was shoved in our faces." Yet in congressional testimony on July 25, Philip Wilcox, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, boasted of the administration's "aggressive investigation" of terrorist groups in the U.S.
The administration has also adopted a policy of denial toward Syria, which sponsors, finances, protects and harbors more than a dozen terrorist groups around the world, ranging from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to the Japanese Red Army. Earlier this year, Islamic Jihad and Hamas representatives in Damascus took responsibility for a series of suicide bombings in Israel that killed 59 civilians, including three Americans.Yet last month Mr. Wilcox testified without equivocation that "there is no evidence that Syrian officials have been directly involved in planning or executing terrorist attacks since 1986." And he praised Syria for "restrain[ing]" and "moderat[ing]" some of the terrorist groups it backs.
At the same time, the Clinton administration has established close ties with groups like the American Muslim Council, which has supported Hamas and other radical groups. Hillary Clinton has worked particularly closely with the head of the AMC, Abdulrahman Al-Amoudi, who has openly collected funds for the legal defense of Mr Marzuk, the Hamas chieftain arrested at JFK Airport, and for Mr. Abdul-Rahman, who organized the World Trade Center bombing. Raising money for a criminal defense fund is perfectly legal, of course. But would Mrs. Clinton meet with the head of the defense committee for Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh? Earlier this year Mrs. Clinton met at the White House with Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR, based in Washington, was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad, the former public relations director of the Texas-based Islamic Association of Palestine, which Oliver Revell, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism and now a security consultant, calls a Hamas front. Both CAIR and IAP have disseminated Hamas communiques and championed the policies of other radical Islamic groups. A recent CAIR report listed as a "hate crimes against Muslims" the conviction of Mr. Abdul-Rahman and the arrest of Mr. Marzuk. CAIR's Board of Advisors includes a number of radicals known for their virulent anti-Semitism and support of the World Trade Center defendants.
One of them, Siraj Wahaj, appeared as a defense witness in their trial. In a recorded speech at a mosque, Mr. Wahaj declared that "one of the most diabolical plots ever in the annals of history, in my estimation, has been the war in the Persian Gulf. It was a plan, and believe me, it is a part of a larger plan, to destroy the greatest challenge to the Western world, and that's Islam. I see the demise of the Soviet Union as a sign for the American people that what happened in the Soviet Union will definitely happen in America unless America changes its course from the new world order and accepts the Islamic agenda."
A Terrorist Rolodex
Last December National Security Adviser Anthony Lake received a delegation of Islamic officials to discuss Bosnia and other issues. The group included representatives of an interlocking network of Islamic companies, trusts and self-described charitable research groups that share the same phone numbers and addresses. The SAAR Foundation, a central element of this network, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the International Institute of Islamic Thought. In turn, according to federal documents and bank records, the IIIT created and has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Islamic Jihad apparatus in Tampa. Other law-enforcement records show that some of the officials who met with Mr. Lake are close colleagues of Mr. Marzuk, who listed their phone numbers in his terrorist Rolodex, seized by federal authorities upon his entry in the U.S.
An effective counterterrorism policy must begin with the understanding that terrorism is the product of an extremist ideological culture, and it can only be fought using a complete moral, political and military arsenal. It's time for the Clinton administration to stop giving aid and comfort to those who have declared themselves America's enemies.
[Copyright 1996 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.]
================
Mr. Emerson is the author of a forthcoming book on militant Islamic extremist networks.
------------------------------------------
Below: Proof that CAIR is linked to the IAP via a shared list server:
WEB PAGES - ABOUT http://search.msn.com/pass/results.aspx?q=islamic+association+of+palestine&FORM=SMCRT
MIM: Not seperated at birth : IAP-HAMAS-CAIR
'--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------
World Net Daily -The Real CAIR
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32242
2003 WorldNetDaily.com
...CAIR is not what it seems – not what it pretends to be.
It is not a group fighting for equal rights for Muslim-Americans. It is not a group trying to protect the interests of Muslims in America. It is not a group promoting human rights for anyone.
It is a group whose real mission is changing the very character of America – remaking it in the image of the Islamo-fascists who fund them from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
You will never hear a nice word about America from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. It's a hate group. It spends all or most of its time and resources denigrating America, condemning it as a pariah state that exploits and oppresses Muslims.
According to CAIR, America is a terrible place for Muslims. At the same time, CAIR boasts Islam is the fastest-growing religion in America. It makes you wonder: If conditions for Muslims are so bad in America, why is Islam so popular? Why are Muslims flocking from all parts of the world to the United States – this hideous concentration camp for Muslims?
I'll tell you why. Many Muslims have come here and continue to come here to escape the Islamo-fascism of places like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia – places about which CAIR never has a bad word to say.
CAIR was late to the party in condemning Osama bin Laden for the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It finally got around to it three months after the fact. Don't expect to hear any CAIR officials condemn suicide bombings by the terrorists in Hamas. The founder of this organization is on record in support of the goals and tactics of Hamas.
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants the United States to become a Muslim country.
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," Hooper told the Star Tribune. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
Founded in 1994, CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association of Palestine, identified as a "front group" for the terrorist group Hamas, according to Steve Pomerantz, former chief of the FBI's counterterrorism section.
Another ex-FBI counterterrorism chief, Oliver "Buck" Revell, has called the Islamic Association For Palestine – Hooper's former employer – "a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants."
CAIR advisory board member Siraj Wahhaj was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White on Feb. 2, 1995, as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments," including the World Trade Center in 1993.
How seriously can we take the charges of a group that called the conviction of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers "a travesty of justice"? How seriously can we take a group that called the conviction of Omar Abdel Rahman, who conspired to blow up New York City landmarks, a "hate crime"? How seriously should we take a group about which Steven Pomerantz, former FBI chief of counter-terrorism, says: "CAIR, its leaders and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups"?
Very seriously.
...The real goal of this group was made clear by its chairman, Omar M. Ahmad, who told a rally of California Muslims in 1998: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."...
---------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=9981
A Bad Day for CAIRSeptember 10th, 2003 will forever be remembered as a grim day for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). On that day, the eve of the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, CAIR faced up to its own terrorist connections. It ran away from testifying before an influential Senate panel that heard a barrage of incriminating evidence about the group and its connections. It saw one of its former officials plead guilty to terrorist-related crimes in Federal Court. And, it was stood up by two Department of Justice officials at an immigration symposium in Florida. CAIR should find it hard to recover from this string of defeats.
Last Wednesday, The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security held the second in a series of hearings aimed at examining Saudi Arabia's role in exporting Islamic extremism abroad. The hearing, titled "Two Years After 9/11: Connecting the Dots," was focused on the prevalence of the radical Wahhabi Islamic sect among Muslim political groups in the U.S. CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad and Chairman Omar Ahmed were invited to testify at the hearing, but both declined to attend. In their absence – and in front of their empty witness chair - the committee heard compelling evidence that Saudi Arabia financially and ideologically supports a network of American organizations that act as the defenders, financiers, and front groups of international terrorists. CAIR has been a major player in this network since its creation in 1994, with a particularly soft spot for the suicide-bombing death squads of Hamas.
Senators turned out in force to connect the dots between CAIR and the deviant Islamic extremism that led to the vicious attacks of 9/11. In his opening statement, Chairman Jon Kyl said, "a small group of organizations based in the U.S. with Saudi backing and support, is well advanced in its four- decade effort to control Islam in America -from mosques, universities and community centers to our prisons and even within our military. Moderate Muslims who love America and want to be part of our great country are being forced out of those institutions."
Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been steadfast in his efforts to uncover the nexus of Hamas front groups in the U.S., was ruthless in his portrayal of CAIR as part of an international terror network. In his opening remarks, Senator Schumer stated that prominent members of CAIR—referring specifically to Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmed—have "intimate links with Hamas." Later, he remarked that "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism."
Even Senator Richard Durbin, who has made common cause with some of America's Wahhabi-backed groups, came down hard on CAIR. In his final comments he conceded that CAIR is "unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect," and requested that the committee seek the testimony of mainstream Muslim groups in its place in the future.
CAIR's affinity for terrorist causes is well documented in the press. At a 1994 meeting at Barry University, Nihad Awad stated succinctly, "I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper has defended Saudi Arabia's financial aid to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. In recent months, three CAIR officials were indicted on terrorism-related charges.
As luck would have it, just hours before the hearing, news services reported that former CAIR official Bassem K. Khafagi had pleaded guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud in federal court in Detroit. The charges were brought against Khafagi for his role with the Islamic Assembly of North America, a group that has advocated violence against the United States and is believed to have funneled money to organizations with terrorist connections. At the time of his arrest, Khafagi was Community Affairs director with CAIR.
Khafagi is one of several IANA officials indicted on terrorism-related charges after Federal agents raided the group's Ypsilanti, Michigan offices in February. Another arrested IANA official, Saudi-born Sami al-Hussayen ran a series of IANA websites that propagated the teachings of radical Islamist clerics closely linked with Osama bin Laden. He also ran the University of Idaho Muslim Students Association. Al-Hussayen is awaiting a deportation order after refusing to testify in his own defense.
The Chairman of IANA has stated that half of the Assembly's funds come from Saudi Arabia, while the other half come from private donors who are primarily Saudi. IANA conferences in the early 1990's featured lectures from Ali al-Timimi, an Islamic preacher recently identified as "co-conspirator number one" in the indictment of 11 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist recruits in a Northern Virginia Jihad network.
One of the 11 Virginia Jihadists, Randall Todd Royer, formerly served as a Communications Specialist and Civil Rights Coordinator at CAIR.
While Senators on Capitol Hill were assiduously connecting the dots to prevent future terrorist attacks, CAIR-Florida was teaming up with the American Civil Liberties Union to sponsor a town hall meeting on immigration issues in South Florida. The September 10th event was billed as an opportunity for residents to discuss "how America and Florida has [sic] changed since September 11, 2001 - our constitutional rights, inter-group relations, and the treatment of our immigrant communities, etc." The event was slated to feature a U.S. Attorney, an FBI representative, and the Assistant Commissioner of the Florida Department of law Enforcement. None of the officials showed up.
By absenting themselves from the meeting, the officials foiled another attempt by CAIR to oppose the Bush administration's War on Terror. CAIR has made a cottage industry out of blaming individual incidents, either real or perceived, of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination on the Bush administration's anti-terror policies, especially the USA Patriot Act. CAIR's uses statistical manipulation and "civil rights" arguments, not to protect innocent Muslims but to exonerate its own "intimate links with terrorism" to use the words of Senator Schumer.
Meetings like the South Florida immigration symposium are an integral part of the Wahhabi groups' strategy of gaining political access to the U.S. government. Since well before 9/11, CAIR and other organizations have alleged to speak on behalf of America's peaceful, moderate Muslims, while simultaneously lending support and funds to terrorist causes. Certain members of the Bush administration, anxious to frame the War on terror in the context of political correctness, have then pandered to the Wahhabi organizations, providing them with phony legitimacy at the expense of the Muslim community at large.
Since September 11th, prominent Wahhabi-backed leaders have been granted meetings with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. These meetings are then used to further the notion that Wahhabi-funded organizations like CAIR are fit to represent America's estimated 6 million Muslims.
This strategy has permitted the Wahhabi Lobby, as the collection of pressure groups are called, to become the de facto pool of consultants for government agencies willing to compromise vigilance for ethno-sensitivity in the War on Terror. The true agendas of groups like CAIR are obscured or forgotten in the process, and Wahhabis are given a blank check to oppose anti-terror policies that threaten to expose their connection to the terrorist support network in the U.S.
Combating the Wahhabi agents of influence in the U.S. will require a comprehensive assessment of the political objectives, operational strategies and sources of funding of each group and their individual leaders. A basic and important step must be to resist the Wahhabi Lobby's attempts to influence U.S. policy. The new absence of Justice Department officials from a CAIR symposium is a welcome sign that government agencies are becoming aware of the Council's close links with extremists. Meanwhile, we must continue to support the government's efforts to apprehend those who serve terrorist causes from within our borders. The guilty plea of CAIR official Bassem K. Khafagi is one of many signs that the U.S. is winning the War against terrorists at home as well as abroad.
---------------------------------------
- Rafiq Jaber was born in Ramallah, Palestine.
- Immigrated to the United States in 1974.
- Presently: President of the ISLAMIC ASSOCIATION FOR PALESTINE.
- A national grass root organization serving Palestine and Arab and Muslim causes.
- A cofounder of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
- A founder of Muslim Civil Center in Chicago.
- A founder of United Muslim American Association (UMAA). This organization. is founded to empower the Muslims in Illinois through the political process.
- A founder of American Muslim Society in Illinois.
- An activist in the Islamic and Arab issues.
- A founder of Christian Muslim dialogue in Illinois, this organization was established by Muslims and Christians to further understanding between Muslims and Christians in the South West Suburbs of Chicago.
- A lecturer in the Islamic and Arab issues around the country in universities and collages.
- An owner of Jaber Financial Services.
- Married with three daughters.
-----------------------
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Crete/3450/terrorists.html
Federal records show that CAIR was created by a Texas-based group, the Islamic Association for Palestine, an organization that Revell has deemed a "Hamas front." The Islamic Association for Palestine has issued Hamas communiques calling for suicide bombing operations, produced and distributed terrorist-training tapes glorifying the killing of "infidels," and published some of the most virulent anti-Semitic and anti-American screeds.
Until he became the founding head of CAIR, Nihad Awad was a top official of the Islamic Association of Palestine. While Awad was an officer, someone in that group's Dallas-based office, according to telephone records released in the World Trade Center bombing trials, was in contact with the conspirators behind the bombing.
MIM : Not seperated at birth :IAP-HAMAS-CAIR The leaders of the Council of Arab American Relations in their own words:
Omar Ahmad
(Click Photo)
Co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
President & CEO of Silicon Expert Technologies, he is a Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan.
"Muslim institutions, schools and economic power should be strengthened in America. Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam ...... Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
-Omar Ahmad 
Ibrahim Hooper
CAIR spokesperson
(Click Photo)
" I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future...But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
"CAIR does not support these groups publicly."
(when asked about CAIR's record of supporting Hamas, Hezbullah and other official terrorist groups)
-Ibrahim Hooper 
Nihad Awad
Executive Director of CAIR
Former public relations director for the Islamic
Association of Palestine (IAP) A palestinian born
in Jordan and now a U.S. Citizen. (Click on Photo)
" I am in support of the Hamas movement."
------------------------------------
For more on Ahmed Bedier see "CAIR vs. the FBI" under MIM articles
Spokesman for Florida CAIR at the Haj in Mecca 2004
http://www.umaofflorida.com/gallery/photo_gallery.html
MIM Note: Ahmed Bedier threatens that "Palestinians may be provoked (by the Jews) to launch attacks outside of it's borders ".
Given that there is no "Palestinian state" and that 3 weeks ago Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian called for "an intifada in the America" is this meant to indicate that Arabs will start attacking in countries all over the world?"
------------------------------------------
Palestinian Americans react with sadness (to Rantisi's death)
By Beth Kassab 4/19/04
Calling it a move destined to provoke more violence, Palestinian Americans in Central Florida said Saturday that the killing of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi sent a wave of sadness and anger through the local Arab-American community.
Business owner Ahmed Mubarak was playing golf with friends Saturday afternoon when they received a distressed phone call from one of their wives, who relayed television news reports of the assassination.
"We were very sad," Mubarak said Saturday night at the annual dinner of the Arab American Community Center, which drew a crowd of close to 300. "We feel this cycle of violence will never end."
Though the Bush administration said it was "deeply troubled" after Israel killed Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin last month, local community members fear that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to the White House last week signaled that the administration had given Sharon a "green light" for more targeted killings.
"There is a feeling that the foreign policy of the United States is being dictated out of Tel Aviv," said Sami Qubty, outgoing president of the community center. "What has happened this week reinforced that feeling."
The idea that Israel is receiving a go-ahead from the United States or other Western nations is dangerous, said Ahmed Bedier, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"Palestinians may be provoked to launch attacks outside of its borders, and that is something we don't want," Bedier said.
With Bush siding with Sharon to allow Israeli settlements to remain in the occupied West Bank territories, there is little motivation for Sharon to work for peace, Bedier said.
Still, many community members expressed sadness at the killing of Rantisi and the inevitable attacks on both sides that will likely follow.
"The big loser," Mubarak said, "is all of the innocent people."
"Enough is enough," said Mohammad Maali, who returned in February from a trip to the Palestinian territories. "Violence is going to bring more violence."
-------------------------------------
MIM : Here a 'poem' written by two children in Florida which was placed oon the IAP/Hamas website's 'poetry page' .Note that it won first place for an academic fair for english at their school.
http://www.iap.org/childrenpoem.htm
Oh children of Palestine!
by
Yasmin Hussein and Sajaa Vurdubakis*
Do not cry, have patience, Allah is much aware, so he will take good care.
All humans are equal so do not fear, for Allah is so very near.
Oh children of Palestine!
We know you are in pain and while some of us are thinking about our fame.
Oh Children of Palestine!
We know the fear you have each time you wake up and we understand there is not much to
drink in your cups.
But Inshallah you will be fine, so just be strong and give it all some time!
Allahu Akbar!
Allahu Akbar!
La Ilaha Ila Allah!
----------
* Yasmin Hussein 14 and Sajaa Vurdubakis 15, live in Florida. They wrote this poem about
Palestine and it won First place in an Academic fair for English in their school. Yasmin can be reached at: [email protected]
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/22